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Prize winner GREAT BARRINGTON — Local Independent label artist Larry Chernicoff’s CD, “October,” was named “Best Made for Surround Title” of the year at the third annual Surround Music Awards. The winners were announced at a star-studded event Aug. 31 at The Highlands in Hollywood, Calif. The award was presented to Chernicoff by rock legend Peter Frampton in a ceremony that also honored surround-sound releases by The Rolling Stones, Herbie Hancock, Jeff Beck, Frampton, Elton John and others. The winners were selected by a panel of 75 judges, including representatives from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, USA Today, Sound & Vision, Pro Sound News, Widescreen Review, Surround Professional, Highfidelityreview.com and Los Angeles-based radio station KCRW. “October,” on the Windy Planet label, features original jazz/classical fusion compositions performed by Chernicoff and his Windhorse large ensemble. The panel of judges was evenly divided in its vote and made the unusual decision to present two awards in the category, to Chernicoff and to Gordon Goodwin for his recording “XXL,” on Silverline Records. “October” is available at Tune Street in Great Barrington, The Bookstore in Lenox and at www.CDBaby.com. New coffeehouse AVERILL PARK, N.Y. — A new coffeehouse, named after Squire and Jacob Dietcher & Co. of Troy, who in 1835, built the original church which now houses the Sand Lake Center for the Arts, will open on Saturday, Sept. 18. The first in a series of acoustic concerts will feature nationally acclaimed vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Susan Trump performing at 8 p.m. Gourmet desserts will be available. Tickets are $15. Reservations: 518-283-4769. The arts center is at 2880 NY Route 43, Averill Park, and is central to Albany, Pittsfield and Bennington. The center is air-conditioned and has plenty of free parking. The second in the Squire Jacob Coffeehouse series will be a performance by Christopher Shaw and Bridget Ball on Feb. 12, 2005. Family program POWNAL, Vt. — The Solomon Wright Public Library will host singer/musician Will Danforth of Chester for a free program at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 18. Danforth will perform an hour of “goodtime music” on guitar, banjo, autoharp, mandolin, mountain dulcimer and blues harp, among other instruments. The program is suitable for all ages and is sponsored by the Freeman Grant funds and the library. A book sale will be held the same day. Information: 802-823-5400. Blues concert NORTH ADAMS — The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts will kick off its Patrons of the Arts Concert Series on Saturday, Sept. 18, with a performance by blues artist Albert Cummings IV. The program, which is free and open to the community, will begin at 8.m. at the Church Street Center on campus. The widely popular Cummings tackles various tempos and styles and has “an unruly desire to entertain.” He regularly shares the stage with B.B. King, James Cotton and Sheryl Crow. A carpenter from Williamstown, his blistering, unpredictable chops on guitar caught the ears of Double Trouble drummer Chris Layton and bassist Tommy Shannon, who produced his first album "From the Heart." It has recently been picked up for release by Minneapolis' Under the Radar Music Group. The concert series will continue with the Margaret Hart Memorial Gospel Fest on Friday, Oct. 22, at 7 p.m. in the Church Street Center, followed by MCLA’s 110th Birthday Celebration featuring Kevin Mcguire in "Broadway has Rhythm" on Saturday, Nov. 6, also at the center. A full slate of performers will take the stage throughout the spring semester. Membership information and a brochure of programs: Office of Alumni & Development, 662-5224. Audio installations NORTH ADAMS — The North Adams Museum of History and Science has announced the installation of audio narrations in two of its exhibit areas. A 15-minute explanation of the solar system is available in the Black Light Gallery. The story includes mention of the local connection played by Sprague Electric Co. employees whose products made the voyage to the moon. Elsewhere in the museum is a copy of the certificate from NASA thanking Sprague for the integrated circuit made here. A nine-minute narration of the events related to the siege of Fort Massachusetts in 1746 has been installed in the museum’s replica of a barracks room at the fort, located in the west end of the city when it was known as East Hoosuck. The museum is in Building 5A, Western Gateway Heritage State Park. It is open Thursday through Saturday, 10 to 4, and Sunday 1 to 4. To arrange for group tours: 664-4700. Chorale auditions WILLIAMSTOWN — The Northern Berkshire Chorale is preparing for its next concert, planned for late January 2005. Auditions for the mixed-voice chorale will be held on Monday, Sept. 20, at Williams College starting at 7 p.m. Rehearsals are on Monday evenings at Williams. The upcoming concert will include works by Mozart, Rossi, Poulenc, Faure and Thompson. Singers of all voice parts should call Michelle Pickard in the music department, 597-2127, to schedule a 10-minute audition with chorale conductor Judith Reichert. Singers should come with a prepared song and be prepared to sight read a piece as well. Hubbard fundraiser CAMBRIDGE, N.Y. — Hubbard Hall Projects, Inc. has announced a 1920s-style “Speakeasy” fundraiser featuring singer Kevin McGuire on Saturday, Sept 25, at the newly renovated Rice Mansion Inn. Early reservations are recommended. McGuire, a cabaret singer and director of the Theater Company at Hubbard Hall, along with pianist Richard Cherry and friends, will bring the 1920s jazz band era to life at the fundraiser fundraiser to benefit historic Hubbard Hall. According to mansion owner and one of the event organizers, Christine Hoffer, the floors of the inn will vibrate with rhythms and dances made popular in the Roaring ’20s such as the fox trot, horse trot, kangaroo hop, duck waddle, squirrel, chicken scratch, turkey trot, grizzly bear, castle walk, tango, hesitation waltz and Charleston. The evening will also feature classic cocktails, a bubble lounge, cigar bar, casino-like gaming tables, a silent auction, exclusive gift shop and more. The velvet ropes to the mansion will open at 7 p.m. The cost is $30 per person for Hubbard Hall members and $35 for non-members. Reservations and information: Hubbard Hall, 518-677-2495. Hubbard Hall is an 1878 rural opera house at 25 East Main St. in historic Cambridge. It is a multi-arts center in Washington County, bringing the theater, dance, music and art to the region. Further information: www.hubbardhall.org. Loring Gallery SHEFFIELD — The Loring Gallery will feature a Group Show of 25 artists through Oct. 31 and will continue to feature the original prints and posters of Toulouse Lautrec and the serigraphs of Andy Worhol. The gallery is on Route 7 and is open through October from 11 to 5 daily, closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Information: 229-0110 or www.loringgallery.com. Quilt festival BENNINGTON, Vt. — The Bennington’s Quiet Valley Quilters Guild will hold its 11th annual quilt show and sale, “Bennington Quiltfest 2004” on Sept. 18 and 19, at Mount Anthony Union High School, Park Street, from 9 to 5 each day. The show will have recent works by area quilters, featured quilter and lecturer Sylvia Einstein, a quilt challenge and a large number of vendors. Lectures will be given at 1 p.m. each day by the featured quilter, in addition to ongoing demonstrations by guild members. A raffle quilt will be given away at the end of the show. The high school will offer ample parking, food throughout the event and is accessible to the handicapped. Information: Judith Smith, P.O. Box 4082, Bennington, VT 05201, 802-823-4631 or www.benningtonquiltfest.com. Scottish Festival16 GOSHEN, Conn. — The St. Andrew’s Society of Connecticut will hold its 21st annual Scottish Festival on Saturday, Oct. 2, at the Goshen Fairgrounds, Route 63. Entertainment will be provided by folk singer Charlie Zahm, Celtic-rock group Rathkeltair, featuring bagpiper Neil Anderson, Connecticut’s own Kasha Breau and Friends, storyteller Ellen Coutts Waff and fiddler Ronnie Stewart with the Catskill Mountain Ceilidh Band. The 42nd Royal Highland Regiment of Foote will hold an encampment, circa 1700s. Competitions will be held in solo bagpiping, highland dancing and invitational athletics for men, women and masters. Children games will also be featured. For kilted men, a “bonny knees” competition will be held, with sign-up at the festival. Clan representatives from the various Scottish clans will also be present. Scottish Country Dancing, the parent of American square dancing, will also be performed. There will be cultural events, such as weaving, sheep herding, genealogy and more. Merchant vendors and food vendors will also be present. Numerous pipe bands will be in attendance, piping throughout the day. The event will be held rain or shine, as indoor facilities are available. The hours are 9 to 5. No pets are allowed. Admission is $10 for adults, $5 for children 6 to 15 and seniors, free for children under 6. Information: www.sasct.org, 860-651-9048 or 203-468-1620. Proceeds from prior festivals have gone to charities both here and in Scotland, such as AmeriCares, Childrens Hospice Appeal of Scotland, Connecticut Food Bank and more. On Friday, Oct. 1, a clan dinner will be held at the Cornucopia Banquet Hall in Torrington. Advance reservations are required. Information: 860-623-0823. Artist featured Western Massachusetts artis, Michael Mongue has recently published a book and is showing his paintings at two galleries in New York. Published in June by Xlibris press of Philadelphia, “M. Mongue: Acrylic Paintings from Berkshire Artist,” is a 10-year retrospective look at his work as a painter. Three of Mongue’s paintings appear in “Luminescent Transfigurations,” a group show at the Amsterdam Whitney Gallery, which runs through Oct. 3 at 511 West 25th St., New York City. Deborah Davis Fine Art, at 345 Warren St. Hudson, N.Y., is exhibiting two of his paintings. The book, a 10-year retrospective of his work, featuring 51 full-color reproductions of his paintings, is available at Water Street Books in Williamstown and Papyri Books in North Adams. It is also available at the publisher’s online bookstore Xlibris.com. Mongue, a self-taught painter with no formal training, began exhibiting his work in 1999 with a one-man show at the Left Bank Gallery in Bennington, Vt. His work has been shown in group and solo exhibits throughout Berkshire County. He is currently represented by Amsterdam Whitney International Fine Art and continues to seek new venues in which to exhibit his paintings. Women’s film GREAT BARRINGTON — The film “Peace X Peace: Women on the Frontlines” will be presented at Simon’s Rock College of Bard on Saturday, Sept. 18, at 10:30 a.m. in the Lecture Center. The screening is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Berkshire Chapter of UNIFEM (the United Nations Development Fund for Women). The film will be preceded by a walk, beginning at 10 a.m. at Blodgett House, to raise awareness on campus and to protest violence against women worldwide. Information: 528-7224. Fiction Series GREAT BARRINGTON — The Fiction Series at Simon’s Rock College of Bard will begin on Tuesday, Sept. 21, with a reading by Sabina Murray at 7:30 p.m. in Blodgett House. The event is free and open to the public. Murray is the author of two novels and a collection of stories. Her book “The Caprices” was awarded the 2003 PEN/Faulkner Award, America’s largest peer-juried prize for fiction. “The Caprices” is a collection of stories set against the backdrop of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Murray recalled her family stories of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines and wrote a history as told through individual lives. She is also a screenwriter whose screenplay “Beautiful Country” was commissioned by Terence Malick. She is a professor in the graduate creative-writing program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and her new novel, “A Carnivore's Inquiry,” was published in June. The Poetry and Fiction Series at Simon’s Rock hosts writers of achievement and attracts audiences from throughout the region. The series will also include writer Rosanna Warren (Oct. 5), poet, novelist and biographer Jay Parini (Oct. 20) and poet Tom Sleigh (Nov. 3). Art demonstration WILMINGTON, Vt. — Vermont-based artist Jane May Jones will demonstrate watercolors on Saturday, Sept. 18, from noon to 2 at Quaigh Designs, West Main Street. The demonstration will be held in the garden or upstairs in the gallery, depending on the weather. Jones will bring some of her work in progress and will demonstrate her techniques on a new painting. Her paintings are for sale at Quaigh Designs, which since 1968 has specialized in Scottish fabrics and local crafts downstairs and a fine art gallery upstairs. Jones’ works include original watercolors of scenes from Nantucket, gi-clée reproductions of New England scenes, as well as a variety of note cards and other reproductions. Her work can also be seen at her Readsboro gallery, studio and garden, which are open by appointment; at the Art on the Mountain Gallery at the Deerhill, West Dover; at Arts Unlimited, South Hadley Mass.; and Bishop’s Stock, Snow Hill, Md. Jones will participate at the Hildene Foliage Art and Craft Festival, Oct. 1,2 and 3 and at Mount Snow, Oct. 9 and 10. Printmaking exhibit LAKEVILLE, Conn. — Morgan Lehman Gallery has announced its first exhibition dedicated to the wide range of printmaking techniques, and will host an opening reception on Saturday, Sept. 18, with refreshments and an opportunity to meet many of the artists, as well as Thomas Lollar, director of the Lincoln Center/List Collection. The Lincoln Center Collection is composed of color lithographs and screenprints by some of the 20th century’s most important living artists. Prints are currently available by artists such as Sol Lewitt, Terry Winters and Elizabeth Murray. On Sept. 18, Lollar will present and discuss the wide range of prints produced by Lincoln Center since 1962. Other print techniques in the exhibition include woodcut, monoprint, mezzotint, intaglio and etching. Complex and organic mixed media prints by Steven Sorman, a master printmaker who has been exhibiting around the country since 1970, will be on view at the gallery for the first time. Emerging New York artist Katia Santibanez has created a series of 17 tiny etchings with hand coloring. Salisbury artist Marjory Reid has just returned from a monotype workshop with four new prints for the show. New Hartford artist Bryan Nash Gill has recently completed a series of unique hand-rubbed woodcuts with chine colle and feathers. Robert Kipniss will be represented by his signature mezzotints. Print Publisher Durham Press works mostly with mid-career artists based in New York. Featured in the exhibition are new prints by James Nares and Tom Slaughter, with additional work available by Polly Apfelbaum, Jennifer Kobylarz and Scott Kilgour. The exhibition will run through Oct. 11. Information: Sally Morgan Oberbeck or Jay Lehman Horowitz, 860-435-0898, or art@morganlehmangallery.com. Gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday, 11 to 5, and by appointment. The gallery is at 24 Sharon Road. Poetry afternoon NORTH CHESTER — The North Chester Chapel will host An Afternoon Of Poetry Sunday, Sept. 19, at 2 p.m. William Jay Smith, award-winning poet, playwright, critic and former Vermont legislator; Paul Elisha, poet, writer and host of The Roundtable on WAMC, Albany; Vincent Dowling, actor, writer and director; and Michael Donovan, associate editor of Country Journal, poet and writer, will be featured. The audience is invited to bring poetry to read. The trustees of the North Chester Chapel maintain the unique one-room meetinghouse as a place to learn and explore the natural and historic life of the village on the Middle Branch of The Westfield River. Light refreshments will follow the poetry. Admission is free, but donations are always welcome to maintain the building. The chapel, built in 1909, is on North Chester Road, off East River Road, opposite the Smith Bridge. Information: 413-667-5566. Glastenbury lecture BENNINGTON, Vt., — The remote mountainous town of Glastenbury will be the focus of a free lecture and slide show by the Bennington Historical Society on Thursday, Sept. 23, at 7 p.m. at the Bennington Museum. Speakers will be Tyler Resch, the museum's librarian, who will describe highlights of the history of Glastenbury, and James Henderson of the Bennington Regional Commission staff, who will offer a series of projected photos taken in the town in different eras. Known for its minimal population — now six — Glastenbury has experienced several decades with official census numbers in the single digits. Sometimes known as a ghost town, for its two settlements, Fayville and South Glastenbury, that were once inhabited, the town had a maximum population of 251 in the 1880 census. Resch's presentation will use facts and fables from a history of the town he hopes to see published. It was published as a series of 23 installments in the Bennington Banner four years ago. Henderson's slides include several aerial photos he took, as well as a variety of historic pictures and other contemporary views. They include scenes of the summer resort that flourished briefly at the terminus of the Bennington & Glastenbury Railroad in South Glastenbury in 1898, a settlement that was wiped out by a flood and never restored. Other recent presentations offered by the Bennington Historical Society have explored the early dairy farms in Bennington and the history of the Furnace Grove community on the Bennington-Woodford line. Joseph Hall is this year's society president. The Bennington Museum is at 75 Main St. (Route 9), 1 mile west of the intersection of Routes 7 and 9 downtown. It is open daily from 9 to 6. Admission is $8 for adults, $7 for seniors and students, children under 12 free. Museum members receive unlimited free admission to the galleries and to the museum's research library, along with other benefits. Information: 802-447-1571 or www.benningtonmuseum.org.
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1Berkshire Announces the 2025 Berkshire Trendsetter Award Finalists

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — 1Berkshire announced the finalists for the 2025 Berkshire Trendsetter Awards.

These awards recognize "outstanding initiatives, talented people, and innovative organizations moving the Berkshires forward." Winners will be announced at the 11th annual Celebrate the Berkshires event. 

The Trendsetter Awards celebrate businesses, organizations, and individuals in six categories. The following are the Berkshire Trendsetter Award categories and finalists for 2025.

2025 Berkshire Trendsetter Awards Categories and Finalists

Driving Visitor Engagement

Finalists:

  • Arrival Art Fair at TOURISTS

  • Berkshire Botanical Garden

  • Berkshire Yoga Festival

  • Catamount Mountain Resort

  • The Mahaiwe

Advancing Our Economy

Finalists:

  • Berkshire Health Systems

  • Electro Magnetic Applications, Inc. (EMA)

  • Greylock Federal Credit Union

  • Proper Connections LLC/Independent Connections LLC/Richmond Telephone

Nonprofit Collaborator

Finalists:

  • Berkshire Agricultural Ventures

  • Berkshire Innovation Center

  • Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health

  • North Adams Farmers Market

  • Zion Lutheran Church

Under 40 Change-Maker

Finalists

  • Abigail Allard

  • Tyler Bissaillon

  • CJ Garner

  • Brett Random

  • Deanna Smith

Visionary of the Year

Finalists:

  • Alander Construction

  • Berkshire Roots

  • Kristy Edmunds - MASS MoCA

  • John Perrealut - Berkshire Humane Society

  • Jenny Wright - North Adams Partnership

Breaking the Mold

Finalists:

  • Celebration of Black Voices at Barrington Stage Company

  • Mo the spokesgoat - MountainOne

  • Roots and Dreams and Mustard Seeds

  • Steeple City Social

  • Yina Moore

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